How many movies has Martin Scorsese acted in that he didn’t direct?
Like many other directors, Martin Scorsese has developed a career-long habit of popping up in his own movies. However, he rarely plays anything more substantial than a very minor supporting role.
It’s a practice that dates back to his feature-length debut after he made an uncredited outing as a thug in 1967’s Who’s That Knocking at My Door and one he’s maintained for six decades. As a result, the legendary auteur has racked up dozens of onscreen appearances, but it isn’t often he ventures outside his self-created wheelhouse to take acting parts in the work of others.
Scorsese has been spied onscreen in 19 of his own features and appears as a talking head in a number of documentaries, whether he’s directing them or not. That said, he can be convinced to branch out and swing by for a guest spot in another filmmaker’s picture, even if it isn’t something that happens regularly, given his 60 years in cinema.
Excluding documentaries and concert films, Scorsese has a surprisingly robust list of credits, appearing in 15 narrative features that he didn’t direct himself. Sometimes, he plays a character; other times, he plays himself, and on several occasions, he wasn’t required in person, which makes for an eclectic bunch of movies.
He played a mafia heavy alongside Sylvester Stallone when they went uncredited in the Roger Corman-produced 1976 comedy Cannonball, played a TV director in Italian comic romp In the Pope’s Eye, embodied opera manager Giulio Gatti-Casazza in the United Kingdom and Soviet Union co-production of biopic Anna Pavlova presumably as a favour to friend, idol, and producer Michael Powell, and took the small part of Goodley in the musical drama Round Midnight.
Scorsese worked with the legendary Akira Kurosawa and brought one of history’s greatest artists to life as Vincent Van Gogh in Dreams, provided the opening voiceover in Stephen Frears’ The Grifters, played Joe Lesser in the Robert De Niro-led communist blacklist drama Guilty by Suspicion, he was Martin Rittenhome in Robert Redford’s Quiz Show, an accountant in David Salle’s Search and Destroy, voiced an anthropomorphised aquatic predator in Shark Tale, cameoed in his daughter Cathy’s sci-fi action flick Campus Code, and was cast as the mentor of Oscar Isaac’s Dante Alighieri in Julian Schnabel’s In the Hand of Dante.
He’s also played himself in Robert Altman’s satire The Player, Philip Frank Messina’s comedy With Friends Like These…, and Albert Brooks’ self-referential Hollywood escapade The Muse. He’s one of cinema’s greatest-ever directors, first and foremost, but it turns out that Scorsese is quite the accomplished actor, too.
How many movies has Martin Scorsese directed?
Killers of the Flower Moon was the 26th feature of Scorsese’s indelible career, and even though he’s into his 80s, the Academy Award-winning icon isn’t planning to call it quits any time soon.
The prolific director has also helmed 17 feature-length documentaries, multiple short films, and one episode apiece of the TV shows Amazing Stories, Boardwalk Empire, and Vinyl, in addition to the seven-episode documentary series Pretend It’s a City.
How many Martin Scorsese movies has Robert De Niro been in?
No offence to Leonardo DiCaprio, but Robert De Niro will always be the most famous onscreen collaborator of Scorsese’s career, with the longtime friends responsible for several of the greatest movies ever made as part of their ten-film partnership.
Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and Goodfellas are all indisputable classics, although plenty of supporters would argue the two have never put a foot wrong. When New York, New York, The King of Comedy, Cape Fear, Casino, The Irishman, and Killers of the Flower Moon are largely considered the dynamic duo’s second-tier works, it speaks volumes to their astonishing consistency as director and star.
